The dark wooden crane standing at the foot of the Lüneburger Wasserviertel is one of the very few surviving treadwheel cranes in northern Europe. The current structure dates from 1797, but a crane on this spot is documented as far back as 1346, when it was used to load barrels of salt — and later wine, herring, copper and iron — onto barges bound down the Ilmenau and the Elbe to Hamburg and the wider Hanseatic trade network.
Inside the crane house, two large wooden treadwheels (worked by men walking inside them) drove the lifting cable through a system of geared shafts. The mechanism is no longer operational but is preserved on view. A short walk along the river takes in the matching old crane house at the Lüner Mühle and the salt warehouses, now mostly converted to flats and offices. A useful visual reminder of what the Stintmarkt actually was before the bars arrived.